People need consulting. Nowadays, many self-help books, audio tapes, audio CDs, video tapes, video CDs, as well as software are available for consulting people on problems in many different fields. Even though these materials help people to some extent, they usually do not consult each individual specifically, do not help people to analyze their problems, do not provide interactive service, do not help people to distinguish a good advice from a bad advice, and do not specify their applicable situations explicitly. Without really understanding an advice and knowing how to apply an advice, an advice, even a good advice, could bring people disasters as seen frequently in real life.
First, these consulting materials normally do not provide opportunity for people to practice what they have learnt. These materials present advices, principles, and examples but they do not provide chance for people to practice in an environment similar to each one's particular situation. Some authors of these materials may appeal people to use their methods in people's daily lives and may even list a proposed action plan with detail instructions. However, the authors cannot control people's behavior after people have closed the book or stopped playing CD. Having no chance to practice, people tend to forget quickly the knowledge they have heard or read and have difficulty to apply well the knowledge in daily life. Due to this reason, people usually purchase many different self-help materials on a same topic from different authors or sometimes even from a same author.
Second, these self-help materials cannot help people to analyze their problems. Usually these materials only provide people some advices, principles, and examples but do not take feedback or just take very little restrictive feedback from people with no concerning about the particular background and the particular situation of each person. Without capturing people's feedback, without concerning people's particular situations, these self-help materials cannot provide people specific helps and address people's specific problems.
Third, these materials usually are not interactive. Nowadays, though people encounter a lot of information each day, people have less time to study in-depth and have less momentum to make actions. Many people need push to take action. If a material is non-interactive, many people could feel bored. People intend to forget quickly the information on the material and therefore, it is more difficult for people to take action.
Forth, different self-help materials may offer different advices on a same issue and sometimes these advices may contradict each other. The differences on these advices come from many reasons. The first reason is that different authors may have different assumptions, which these authors have not clearly stated in their books or tapes, or they have not emphasized enough. The second reason is that even though different authors have same assumptions on a same scenario, they may adopt different approaches on handling the scenario.
Fifth, a few authors of the self-help materials have not verified each advice on their materials by themselves. They may copy some advices from other materials and cite many quotations from other people to make their materials look more complete. These authors may not have enough experience on what they said, do not understand the real meanings of an excerpt, and do not know the applicable scope of an excerpt and the limitations of an advice. It is the responsibility of people, who are using these self-help materials, to distinguish essences from appearances and tell a good advice from a bad one.
This invention will overcome above shortcomings by providing people interactive personal consulting system, monitoring people's progress, helping people to collect advices, capturing people's feedback, aiding people to model and analyze object, giving people advice, assisting people to build environment and customize the personal consultative system, reporting people progress, and offering people private training.